


Moving Out

by arrasails



Series: First Hellos [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Physical Abuse, e/g friendship is my favourite thing, tw: abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arrasails/pseuds/arrasails
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having known each other six months Grantaire offers a solution to Eponine's family troubles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Out

“Hey, ‘Ponine, I’m heading home.”  
Eponine smiled, but the worst part of her day was always when Grantaire left the bookshop.   
“Sure, see you tomorrow.” That was a promise. Grantaire came to her shop everyday (even Sundays when it was technically closed, but Eponine came in anyway, to dust or tidy or put away new stock, sometimes she would just sit on the floor and read, she'd take any chance she could grab to escape her home life).   
“Do you want to come round? Like, permanently?”  
Eponine didn’t even think. She threw her arms around her best friend and cried into his shoulder.  
Grantaire grinned and kissed her hair. They’d first spoken less than six months ago, when an irritated Eponine insisted Grantaire, who’d been sat in the comfiest armchair every day for three days with a sketchbook on his lap, either had to buy something or leave. Grantaire smirked, and produced a beautiful charcoal drawing of Eponine. In this drawing Eponine was smiling. She hadn’t smiled since she’d been eight years old. Eponine had cried then. Silent tears and a smile erupted across her cheeks. She’d hugged Grantaire, who himself had only drawn the picture for his art club, and he’d hugged her back. “You can talk to me,” he whispered. “I’m here for you.”  
So young Eponine had spilled her secrets and an unlikely friendship was formed. Every day from then on Grantaire came in with a cup of coffee for them both, and they’d sit behind the counter and sometimes Eponine would read whilst Grantaire drew, or they’d talk about Eponine’s day at school and Grantaire’s attempts at finding work. Sometimes they’d just sit, but the silence was enough for both of them.  
Grantaire had been to Eponine’s house several times, when she’d texted him at 2am because everything had gotten too much in the Thenardier household, and he’d sneak in through her window and hug her and they’d fall asleep on her bed. This hadn’t happened for months now though. The beatings she’d gotten when she’d been caught were too much for both of them.   
Eponine had never been to Grantaire’s flat however, in her mind it was a palace. The ceilings sparkled and the rooms were vast, her bed would be comfy and it could swallow her whole. She’d been dreaming of her prince for as long as she could remember.  
In reality though Grantaire lived in a flat above a Chinese takeaway, in a one bedroomed apartment with a dodgy shower and no oven. To Eponine it was no different.  
“Pack tonight,” Grantaire had said. “One more night with them and then we’ll live together.”  
Eponine didn’t have much to pack. The sixteen year old wasn’t exactly spoilt. She pushed her books from their shelf into a thick bin bag, and her clothes into a second bag. She grabbed her school things and put them in her leather satchel, with her hairbrush and makeup. Her toothbrush would wait until the morning.   
When it was one am and she’d failed to sleep a wink, she tiptoed out her room and into her parents. She took a photo from her mother’s bedside, one showing Eponine with her siblings, both of them grinning out of the frame.   
She thought about how her parents looked at her, how they treated her and she was filled with a sudden rage. She grabbed handfuls of her mother’s jewellery; she stole her father’s collection of watches. She saw the open window and threw her parents clothes right out of it. She was smiling and close to laughing. This was the happiest the girl had ever been. Once the destruction was over she packed her guitar and called Grantaire.  
“Ep’, it’s half one in the morning. I am hammered, ok. I can’t pick you up. I’m going to call my friend Combeferre, but if he can’t bring you here you’re going to have to stay ok? I love you”  
He hung up, and Eponine impatiently held her phone, praying for the call that let her leave immediately. Five minutes later the mobile in her hand buzzed.  
“Twenty minutes ok, he’ll be outside in twenty minutes.”  
\----  
Seventeen minutes later a boy with pulled up outside the Thenardier house. The car was old, and the paint was peeling. The boy, Combeferre, looked tired; he had a jumper pulled over his top half (which, although Eponine wasn’t aware, was all he was wearing on his top half) and a pair of too short pyjama bottoms hanging several inches above his ankles. To Eponine he was a knight in shining armour.  
She felt a stab of guilt when the door opened and the boy helped her load all her possessions into the boot.   
When she sat in the passenger seat Combeferre looked at her. His eyes were warm and friendly, and Eponine felt she had to ask.  
“I didn’t, we didn’t wake you did we?”  
“No.” His voice felt like the summer’s day she’d spent at the beach with her brother and her sister, it felt like the day she’d been employed at the bookshop and realised she could avoid going home for hours. It was the birthdays and Christmases and holidays she’d never had.   
“I was revising, exams aren’t too far away” he finished.  
Combeferre looked once more at Eponine; he saw the shape of a faded bruise across her left cheek and was pleased he lied. The call had disturbed his dreaming and he’d left the house the second he was decent. But he definitely didn’t regret it.  
“So… how do you know Grantaire?” Eponine asked.  
“School, he was the year above me at primary and again at sixth form. How about you?”  
“He came to my work one day, so you’re seventeen?”  
He smirked. “Seventeen and a half.”  
“Sixteen and eleven twelfths” she grinned in reply.   
The journey was almost ten minutes, but the two were able to keep a conversation blooming until the car pulled up outside Eponine’s new home. Small and shabby, sure, but Eponine wasn’t bothered. It was hers.  
Combeferre helped her carry her belongings up the staircase as, whether to let them in or purely because he was too drunk to remember to lock in, Grantaire had left the door ajar.  
When she pushed the door open she was surprised to see the lights off. Automatically reaching to her left for some kind of switch she illuminated the room.  
“SURPRISE!” came a cry from behind the settee. Balloons were scattered around the living room and a party popper was let off in her face. Grantaire had covered the walls with white paper and had elegantly scrawled “Welcome Home Eponine” on every surface he could.  
He’d made her a bed on the settee from jumpers and bits of cloth, and she could smell a cake in the oven.  
Combeferre walked into the room with more of Eponine’s possessions than he should be carrying, and he laughed when he saw the amount of work his friend had put into making this perfect for the girl.  
“So” Grantaire began, “I don’t know if you two have classes tomorrow, but I think you should blow them off. Let’s celebrate Eponine’s arrival with a beer and a film. Yes, my underage friends, real beer.”  
The three of them piled on the sofa and switched on the TV, the film was slow and boring but Eponine had her hands in Grantaire’s and Combeferre.   
She was home.

**Author's Note:**

> Eponine/Combeferre is a lovely thing so that'll probably happen soon.  
> Not sure whether to introduce Enjolras...  
> Oh and Grantaire is 18  
> Let me know what you think, thanks for reading!


End file.
